The present invention relates to an electronic message management system and method, and more particularly, to an electronic message storage, tracking, management, and response method and system.
The number of Internet users continues to grow at an astounding rate. Accordingly, Internet Web sites have become an important way to communicate with customers. Internet Web sites are being used to send electronic message inquiries to customer service departments of many companies. Accordingly, as with traditional telephone customer service departments, customers expect timely responses to their e-mail inquiries.
An analysis was performed on the proficiency of companies in responding to e-mail inquiries received through their Web site. The study found that:
17% of the companies responded via e-mail;
27% of the companies did not respond to the e-mail inquiries;
8% responded via the U.S. postal service; and
48% of the companies did not have any mechanism for accepting e-mail inquiries.
Additionally, of the small percentage of companies actually responding to e-mail inquiries, many of those companies took 3-4 weeks to respond to e-mail inquiries, with many of the inquiries never being answered. Many popular Web sites generate tens of thousands of hits, and thousands of e-mail inquiries, per month. As the popularity of the Internet increases, the number of e-mail inquiries sent will continue to increase.
At the present time, electronic message inquiries are handled manually by customer service departments. In other words, the e-mail is sent directly to a customer service Mail server. The e-mail message inquiries are then read by a customer service representative who is assigned to respond to the e-mail inquiries. The customer service representative may either respond to the message or may refer the message to another customer service representative who is more qualified to answer the inquiry. Currently, the process of forwarding the messages to responsible customer service representatives (CSRs) is accomplished manually. In other words, either the forwarding CSR clicks the xe2x80x9cforwardxe2x80x9d button to send the message to the responsible CSR or the e-mail inquiry is actually printed out and physically handed to the responsible CSR. The responsible CSR then responds to the e-mail inquiry.
This manual process of responding to electronic messages results in a lack of electronic message management and a failure to provide any type of quality assurance on the message responses. For example, in a traditional system, once an e-mail inquiry is received at the designated mail server a customer service representative may access that e-mail message by using any known e-mail program (e.g. Eudora). If the customer service representative cannot answer the message, he must refer that inquiry to another CSR that can answer the question. With these known systems, the CSR must xe2x80x9cmanuallyxe2x80x9d forward the inquiry to another responsible CSR able to take the inquiry. The e-mail is xe2x80x9cmanuallyxe2x80x9d forwarded, for example, by designating the e-mail address of the responsible CSR and clicking the xe2x80x9cforwardxe2x80x9d button in the mail program. Once the responsible CSR receives the forward inquiry, he or she may respond to the inquiry.
Accordingly, these traditional system are not well suited to handle a large load of electronic message inquiries. The manual forwarding of inquiries to responsible CSRs may take a considerable amount of time when there are thousands of inquiries and where there are many different CSRs (e.g. one to take billing inquiries, one to take technical support inquiries, one to take dealer locator inquiries). The time needed to initially read each message, to determine who the responsible CSR is, to determine the location of the responsible CSR, and to forward the message to the responsible CSR for response, results in long response times.
Additionally, these traditional systems do not provide any efficient means to provide quality assurance and electronic message tracking. For example, once the responsible CSR responds to the message, it is sent to the customer without being reviewed for appropriate content. This lack of quality control may result in inappropriate, or inaccurate, responses being sent to customers and accordingly, damage to valuable customer relations.
Additionally, in these known systems, the manual forwarding of electronic message inquiries to responsible CSRs results in a lack of message status tracking. In these known electronic messaging systems it is virtually impossible to administer the status of the electronic message inquiries, to determine what the inquiries were about, who the responsible CSR is, which inquiries have been responded to, and which inquiries are still in need of attention. For example, as an illustration, assume that in one week Company xe2x80x9cFortune 500xe2x80x9d receives 100,000 e-mail inquiries. Assume that the e-mail messages were distributed as follows:
25,000 messages were sent to 100 different technical support CSRs;
25,000 messages were sent to 100 different billing CSRs;
25,000 messages were sent to 100 different product CSRs;
5,000 messages were sent to 20 different dealer locator CSRs; and
20,000 messages were sent to 100 general CSRs.
With traditional e-mail messaging systems, the only way that these different CSRs can obtain access to the appropriate e-mail inquiry is to either:
1.) manually forward the e-mails to the responsible CSR;
2.) print out the e-mail message and physically deliver it to the responsible CSR; or
3.) have the original e-mail message sent directly to the different e-mail addresses of each CSR.
All of these methods would be inefficient for distributing e-mail inquiries to responsible CSRs and, accordingly, for the subsequent responding to the 100,000 e-mail messages.
Additionally, with these known systems, it would be virtually impossible to provide any administrative tracking or quality assurance on these 100,000 e-mail inquiries. Once the e-mail inquiry has been forwarded to the responsible CSR, administration could not efficiently track the status of the inquiry (i.e. responded to or still pending) or the content of the responses being sent. In these known systems, the individual CSR would have to individually inform administration of the status of each assigned e-mail inquiry and forward each response to administration for approval.
As the popularity of the Internet increases, electronic message communication will become a standard and indispensable form of communication. Accordingly, companies need to implement e-mail communication with their customers. Additionally, many companies are, and will be, receiving thousands of electronic message inquiries per week. Accordingly, there is a need for an electronic message management system that provides for the efficient storage, administration, tracking and reporting of customer inquiries. Additionally, an electronic message management system is needed which will allow the generation of timely responses to electronic message inquiries. The present invention provides such an electronic message management system that provides the following advantages over existing e-mail programs:
1.) provides an automatic interface to a structured database for forwarding all electronic messages;
2.) provides access to the database by authorized CSRs, from remotely located computers;
3.) stores the electronic messages by predetermined attributes (e.g. time the inquiry was received, the e-mail address of the customer, the status of the message) so that the e-mail inquiries can be retrieved by any, or all, of the attributes;
4.) allows administrators to provide quality assurance reviews on selected responses before sending the message to the customer;
5.) provides updates to the interface based on CSR or administrator activities so that the status of all electronic messages are current;
6.) provides a list of authorized CSRs that may have access to the electronic messages in the interface, and allows customized settings of individual CSR privileges;
7.) provides security against hackers and viruses;
8.) provides a historical record of all electronic messages from each customer;
9.) interfaces the CSRs to a database containing predefined, standard, responses for frequently asked questions;
10.) allows the forwarding of the message to the relevant expert, the database being updated to indicate that the message has been referred to an expert;
11.) tracks the responses to all electronic message inquiries and updates the database accordingly;
12.) provides the ability to efficiently add additional CSRs, delete CSRs, add standard responses, and to provide custom reports;
13.) allows categorization of all electronic inquiries/messsages by client-defined categories;
14.) allows the reporting of the average response time of responses; and
15.) allows the monitoring of CSRs.
The present invention is preferably accomplished by: receiving electronic messages at an electronic network; forwarding the electronic messages to a database; storing the electronic messages based on predetermined message attributes; interfacing a customer service representative computer to allow electronic access to the electronic messages; transmitting one of the electronic messages from the database from the customer service representative computer based on one of the predetermined message attributes; displaying the transmitted message at said customer service representative computer; responding to the transmitted message; and updating the database to indicate that the transmitted message has been responded to. The present system also allows for the administering and updating of the database according to specific application needs.
In addition to the features mentioned above, objects and advantages of the present invention will be readily apparent upon a reading of the following description.